I do think we (the US in particular, and the western world in general) are undergoing a process that, if it continues to fruition, is societal collapse. That said, I don't think it is imminent or unavoidable.
I do think there's a gray area between immigration generating diversity and immigration serving the same ultimate purpose as invasion. At some point you go from becoming diverse to being supplanted. Immigration rates high enough to drastically change the culture of a society within the lifespan of one human being can be catastrophic. It naturally creates division and strife.
It really doesn't matter if the cultures are both equally advanced, good, if one is being mean to the other, etc. There will be friction. When this happens slow enough, over a few generations, newcomers adopt prevailing norms, and the incumbent culture adopts some newcomer customs. Also, the stronger the incumbent group hold to their customs and take pride in them, the more immigration they can handle, because this creates peer pressure on the newcomer group to assimilate.
The combination of massive immigration and social pressure to view our own customs as unimportant or even inferior is potentially a bad combination for the survival of our society. I hope to see it survive, I do like it, I wouldn't want an entirely homogenous society.
Sure. For example, historians debate the extent to which the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain was a migration vs an invasion. However, we know the Anglo-Saxons at least did things like set up their own kingdoms and cause some of the Celtic Britons to flee to Wales and Brittany. It seems to me like immigrants in present-day western countries are really, really far away from doing anything like that.
At what point did you stop being the invader and become the invaded? Conceivably, someone could have held the same sentiment about someone more vunerable in your lineage whose efforts leave you where you sit today. I favor giving that person a chance and not labeling them an invader. I believe that's what's outlined in the rulebook here (the United States for me).
> At some point you go from becoming diverse to being supplanted. Immigration rates high enough to drastically change the culture of a society within the lifespan of one human being can be catastrophic. It naturally creates division and strife.
This line of thinking, positioning and labeling I consistently find troubling as it leads to violence against minorities justified by often false, purposeful anecdotes without consideration of the policies and practices that cause inequality. That's catastrophic.
Yes. There are those in the US that still regard the mass migration onto the continent of the European settlers as an invasion.
>This line of thinking, positioning and labeling I consistently find troubling
I agree, but 1) this line of thinking will always occur, and has occurred in native populations in every instance of mass immigration, and 2) whether troubling or not, in at least some scenarios is the correct analysis of the state of affairs.
You cannot decide what people think no matter how hard you try, and you cannot ignore something if it might very well be true just because you find it troubling.
I can only imagine what it would have been like to travel to another country many decades ago before globalization and travel. Here is Tokyo 100 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQAmZ_kR8S8
The simplest of things - a tunic or a shirt is commoditized by the entire globe. Everyone on the whole globe just wears a shirt/pants. Each nation had their own attire and it was just normal to wear skirts in Scotland and suits in England, and kimonos in Japan. This was erased by globalism and diversity. It may be that shirt/pant combo is actually superior attire due to some particular measurable quantity, but I suspect it was because of English imperialism.
Yeah, CCP is kinda working on that whole eliminating cultural diversity thing as we speak
Just to put things in perspective, New Zealand's population is half of Silicon Valley / SF Bay Area.
I also feel like I'm reading a bunch of coded statements with some of these comments in here.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but rather pointing out that -- in the grand scheme of history -- every collapse can be recast as a 'diversifying' of the original society, even if the end state of the society has little in resemblance to the original.
For example, the Roman empire lasted -- in the form of the byzantines -- until 1453, only a few decades before Columbus discovered America, but the Byzantines were not really Roman in the way we think of ancient Rome, despite having every claim to being one and the same with the Roman empire.
The folks from Easter Island would beg to differ if they were still around!